Just A Click Away
For starters, we put everything that’s appeared in the print edition of Stone Business (save some items that, for copyright reasons, we couldn’t reproduce) online. It’s something we’re maintaining with each issue; use the Search box up in the right-hand-corner to benefit from our entire archive of news, articles and columns.
You can also read our recent issues online in a digital edition. Those already in the know (which now includes you) realize that you can see Stone Business – including this issue – before it even hits the docks of the U.S. Postal Service to begin delivery.
The Internet, though, offers much more than just providing an online photocopy of what we’ve offered in print. (After all, why would want to read a column like this one that tells you to go online when you’re already there?) That’s where what we’re doing gets interesting.
We’ve made a decision that you don’t need to wait for news until we crank out a magazine. If it’s happening today, it appears today at the website, because it’s not going to be news if it waits for the four to six weeks of a monthly magazine’s printing cycle.
We also use our website for some original content you can’t find elsewhere. Look at the Blogs section and you’ll find Joe Becker giving you a month-by-month account of the renovation of stone at St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, S.D.; he’s not finished with the blog because he’s still working on the job.
Letting you know about what’s on our website involves our other online activity – social media. When there’s something new, you’ll find out about it through our Twitter feed (@stonebizmag) or Facebook page.
Our Twitter and Facebook entries, however, are not all about us. Take a look every few days, and you’ll find plenty of links to interesting news articles, or stone-related blogs, or an interesting bit of video, and many of them aren’t included within the webpages of Stone Business Online.
It’s how we covered news like the bankruptcy of Fletcher Granite last year, or showcased an award-winning video about the marble at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Some of this would be stale when it finally would appear in the magazine, or wouldn’t translate to print at all, but you can see it now.
We’re also offering some works-in-progress, such as our Stone Tweets Daily! summary of stone-themed content on Twitter. It’s generated by a computer in Switzerland that occasionally proposes some odd ideas about what involves, but it’s a quick alternative to working through hundreds of tweets daily. (You can also subscribe for free and get a daily email reminder about its availability.)
We’re continuing to develop new things online that complement the print magazine you’re reading now. The Internet doesn’t limit the space we can use to provide information, and can offer more than words and pictures; print offers a different reading experience and, until we’re all toting tablets or e-readers, gives Stone Business portability beyond the computer screen.
Take a pause from these pages in the next day or so, and catch up with us online. In these days when everyone seems to want to give you less, we’re giving you more – and I think you’ll like how it all adds up.
Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net. And don’t forget to keep up with Stone Business on Twitter and Facebook.
This article initially appeared in the February 2011 print edition of Stone Business. ©2011 Western Business Media Inc.
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